Great Ball of Fire!

On February 18, 2009, in the 8:00 PM darkness, my friend Orlando and I were hiking the bike trail along the west bank of the San Gabriel River. We started from Peck Road and proceeded north (Toward the San Gabriel Mountains). When we got to about a quarter mile passed the Pomona (60) Freeway, we decided to turn back.

First in a Series

Orlando went ahead of me, as he wanted to walk faster to exercise a bit. After several minutes I glanced across the river to observe a scene that included the shadows of trees and various lights behind them; including street lights and bill boards near the freeway about a half away—if that. As most street lights nowadays, they appeared almost amber or orange.

Suddenly I saw what at first appeared to be one of those "amber" street lights start moving toward the North (the opposite direction) along the other bank in the distance. It would have had to be very low to the ground for me to have to look twice to see if one of those street lights was somehow moving, as if I were seeing things—I was.

This light appeared to be orange and very bright, eerie and alien. As it moved it must have been ascending, but early on it was moving or floating quite parallel to ground. I realized that it was probably in front of the trees on the other bank very close—probably a little farther than a quarter mile.

I began to run down the bike path (South) toward Orlando.  I wanted him, or anybody else to see this with me. By this time very far in front of me around a bend so I couldn't see him. It seems like I ran a long time to catch up with him. As I got closer and closer to him, I yelled several times for him to stop. When he finally did I ran up to him pointing to the object that was by this time floating high in the sky, and said: “Orlando what’s that? What’s that? Is it a helicopter? A UFO? Jesus! Is that a helicopter?” He replied “no it’s not”. We both observed it for a minute; it and it appeared to be heading somewhat in our direction. He said “what is it?” I said I don’t know. It was mesmerizing.

By this time the object seemed bigger and it had no particular shape, more like a "round" but amorphous in nature. It was bright and moved through the air slowly and appeared to change from orange to white and it appeared hot. It looked like a hot blob in a lava lamp. As we observed it was definitely getting closer. I could actually see flames; it was definitely on fire. I began to get frightened because it looked like it was turning toward us.

Similar to what we saw.

But suddenly, it appeared to stop about a half mile away, on the other bank of the river near a power tower. It made no sound, it just burned. It was enormous. Then it started to burn out. The fire was ending. It was as if sections of it were burning off one by one. As it burned it was dropping what appeared to be the burnt remnants, like any other thing burning out.

As it burned away I tried to look in the area in the low sky where the UFO fireball had just been, thinking I’d see what caused the flames or if I could see anything at all. But I didn’t see anything else. Also, there were no clouds were the object burned away and no smell, like there would have been if fireworks had exploded there. But no, it simply vanished.

We couldn't stop thinking about it for days, and even now I see it, in my mind, almost every day.